


curl up and dye

by fakeplasticlily



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, HE'S STILL MY BABY THOUGH, Multi, What else is new, also featuring gratuitous grantaire/éponine friendship, and jehan being jehan, hairdresser!AU, in which grantaire fails at things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-09
Updated: 2013-03-21
Packaged: 2017-12-04 19:06:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/714020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fakeplasticlily/pseuds/fakeplasticlily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire has hands. And Enjolras has the loveliest golden curls, the sort that beg to be touched. Oh, the possibilities. (Hairdresser!AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

If anyone were to have given Grantaire the slightest prior inkling as to how his first visit to Jehan’s hair salon might go, he probably would have laughed in their face.  
  
Standing at the doorway and looking into the shop before him now, he draws his phone out and checks the address Éponine had texted him. (Accompanied by a _um, you remember that bar we’d been to that time you may or may not have enlisted the services of three brazilian hookers, and sent them to officer javert’s place? yeah, so this is behind that. and kinda to the left too? but if you’re coming from the park end, it’s more like, adjacent…_ ) Then he takes three steps back, and pokes his head around to read the number next to the door.

 _Salon Musain_ , it reads, loud and clear. _12, Boulevard Saint-Michel._  
  
He doesn’t laugh, but his eyes go wide like dinner-plates and a faint wash of horror drains the colour out of his face.

He’s discreetly spun about five degrees into his goal of doing a one-eighty and bolting as far and fast as his legs can take him, when Éponine’s voice calls out.  
  
“There you are!” she exclaims happily. She’s standing at one of the booths running down both sides of the room, hands busy on a head of hair belonging to a rather large woman with a face like apple pie. “Ha, looks like my directions were quite flawless then, _clearly_.”  
  
Tucking a lock of straggly brown hair behind her ear with the back of her wrist, she directs a self-satisfied smirk halfway round at the back of the store. “Hear that, Jehan? I do believe your boyfriend owes me certain items of the jingly-jangly, pocket-fattening variety now.”

Grantaire fully intends to curse her in his head for thwarting his escape, but then his eyes light on the area a few feet behind her.

“Éponine,” says one of the two occupants of said area, the one who isn’t being attacked with what looks like at least seven different kinds of hair products. “Stop making bets with Courf, and fix another clip on the side.”  
  
“Buzzkill,” sighs Éponine with an elaborate eye-roll, reaching over her client to retrieve said object from her table.

The booth she’s manning is nearest to the door, the first of three on the right side of the room. Three more stand on the other side, lonely and gathering dust. At the back of the shop there’s a small cash counter, and a winding staircase behind it leads up to what must be the flat Jehan shares with his boyfriend.  
  
Grantaire’s still squinting at the man standing at the last booth on the right, though, who _seems_ to respond to Jehan’s name, and bears his face. But he’s wielding a pair of scissors in one hand like a weapon and executing what looks like some sort of elaborate war dance around the poor fellow he’s attending to with a slightly maniacal glint in his eyes and holy shit, there’s no way that could be Jehan.  
  
All right, so he doesn’t really know the guy, personally. He’s a more a friend of Éponine’s—or well, if you wanted to get technical about it, a friend of Marius’s. Which amounts to the same thing, because any friend of Marius’s is a friend of Éponine’s, much the same as any bead of sweat that trickles down Marius’s perfect brow is manna from the heavens to Éponine.  
  
Still, he’d sat her down and made her tell him all about the guy owning the place she works at; the same place he’s applying for a job himself, now. And he’d demanded details. It’s all standard procedure when dealing with Éponine, whose idea of a fun family activity is hanging about the mall with the cherubic little devil that’s her brother Gavroche, casually nicking shiny objects from shiny-floored stores.  
  
So Jehan’s twenty-three; lives with his boyfriend in the flat above his shop; writes poetry; wears flowers in his hair; possibly helps little old ladies cross roads in his free time; and definitely visits as many orphanages as he can over the weekend. Apparently, you could gauge how many from the degree of overflow of the dustbins at the shop next morning, with Kleenex crusted over with the dried tears of the gentlest soul you ever would meet.  
  
Not this—this _weirdo_ putting up a performance worthy of a National Geographic special on particularly violent mating rituals in the wild. Complete with an aura of frankly terrifying levels of focus and intensity surrounding him to a good thirty foot perimeter.  
  
Out of the corner of his eye Grantaire catches Éponine frantically dancing her eyebrows at him to get his attention, and turns to her. _Shh,_ she mouths with a meaningful jerk of her head towards the specimen at the back, _he’s in the zone_. She beckons him to her.  
  
Crossing gingerly over, Grantaire props himself against the table and folds his arms. Éponine snips away at the apple-pie lady’s hair, blithely humming some obscure and god-awful hip-hop song under her breath.

“So,” Grantaire casually begins, “When were you planning on telling me my new employer is more likely to make my intestines into papier mâché with those hands, rather than stick flowers in my hair with them, which was what I was tricked into thinking! Oh Éponine, you wound me.”

“Is that why you agreed to apply for a job here then?” snickers Éponine. “I always knew you were a freaky one, R, but you might just have managed to shock me this time!”

Reaching over, Grantaire flicks her on the forehead. It’s a move he’s picked up over the years he’s known her, calculated to annoy her to the point of tantrums every time he tries it. Like the countless times he’s done it to wake her up on the tube when they reach their stop and she’s fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder, or to shut her up when she starts talking about Marius while he’s still hungover, or simply to distract her when she’s upset, this is no exception. With a toss of her head and a disgruntled harrumph, she glares at him over a scrunched up nose.  

It’s a picture Grantaire finds quite frankly adorable, but he doesn’t say so out loud. He may not bear much regard for his liver from the impressive accuracy with which he stumbles from one bar to the next in the wee hours of morning, but when it comes to his balls it’s quite a different story altogether.

“You’re all so mean to me,” says Éponine, with a tragic little sigh. “All of you! If it isn’t Jehan telling me to fix _clips_ on things, it’s Joly telling me to wash the scissors again, or Enjolras telling me to shut up. Except Combeferre. Combeferre’s all right.”

“Enjolras,” says Grantaire suddenly, before he can think why. “Enjolras… Who’s Enjolras?”

Éponine goggles at him for a moment. “Huh,” she says thoughtfully, “So psychic hot guy radar is actually a thing, then. _Nice_.”

“Wait, what?”

“Only the fact that you managed to single out the name of the one guy of the bunch who’s probably single-handedly accelerating global warming as we speak?" Éponine laughs. "And he’s totally your type! Blonde, blue-eyed, fiery hot blood, ice-cold untouchable heart. Not that he isn’t pretty much everyone’s else type, though. Except mine,” she finishes with a touch of pride.

“Whatever,” Grantaire mutters, ducking behind an arm. It’s childish and silly and ridiculously fucking embarrassing, but for some reason he can’t help but flush scarlet. “And anyway,” he adds, quickly steering the conversation in a different direction, “I don’t think that's much of an achievement on your part, considering the perma-boner you’ve had for our charming young neighbour ever since you moved in with me.”

He almost welcomes the hairspray can Éponine brandishes menacingly in his face, swatting it away till a pointed cough from below them interrupts. It’s the lady with the apple-pie face, and she’s looking disapprovingly up at them.

If Grantaire had missed the plump moustache gracing her upper lip earlier, he gets a good eyeful of it now. It twitches in time to the vein he can almost _see_ throbbing steadily in her temple. 

“Sorry, Mrs. Hucheloup,” Éponine mutters, hurriedly returning to her battle with the thicket of hair gracing the top of the apple pie. Grantaire catches the flicker of worry in her eyes as she hastens back to her task, and resists the urge to smirk.

But Éponine knows him as well as she does her own shadow, knows that he’s _thinking_ it, and this leads to her shooting him a quick spray on the cheek from the can she’d been threatening him with.

“Ugh,” Grantaire grimaces, wiping at it.  “What even was that thing?”

“Such little faith in me,” Éponine sighs. She leans in suddenly over Mrs. Hucheloup’s head and plants a big, sloppy kiss on Grantaire’s cheek, just where she’d sprayed him.

She pulls back at a motion behind her. Jehan’s stepped away from his client, and he whips the towel off his torso quite dramatically, baring the young man beneath it to the world at large at last. (A garishly green polka-dotted scarf around his neck with it.)

“That’s Joly,” Éponine supplies her commentary in a whisper, as he stumbles off the chair with a rather dazed expression on his face. “He’s always got at least five different medical conditions afflicting him at any given moment, and he has a lot of scarves.”

Meanwhile, Jehan finishes washing his hands at the sink, dries them off, and tugs at the band holding up his hair in a tight knot at the top of his head. (“Freaky hairdresser mode Jehan,” Éponine hisses, “Deactivate!”) Flaxen hair cascades down to his shoulders, and the flowers threaded through the piece of string gathering it loosely are a little crumpled, but still fresh.

They snuff out the strange and terrifying aura surrounding him before Grantaire knows it, and replace it with calm eyes, a soft mouth and gentle hands that reach out to clasp his client at the wrist.  

“You really can’t stop even for a bit today?” he says, sounding genuinely miserable. “Some tea and the little piece I’ve been working on this week, maybe?”

Joly has the grace to look apologetic as he turns down the hopeful suggestion. “Not a chance, Jehan, not today. Didn’t you see the weather forecast? 53% chance of rain this afternoon, partially cloudy sky,” he finishes with a slight shudder. 

Grantaire glances at Éponine, the _is he for real?_ written large and clear all over his face. She’s been watching him closely to see how he’s reacting to this turn of events, and when their eyes meet she looks as though she’s trying very hard not to laugh. 

“See you tomorrow, then,” says Jehan glumly. “Chin up, yeah?” he adds, giving his worried friend a reassuring pat on the back. 

When Joly washes his hands one last time and hurries out of the shop with scandalised looks at the clock and at the sky outside, Grantaire straightens from his recline against the shelf. But Jehan hasn’t noticed him yet, and suddenly Éponine is terribly interested in the subtle inflections involved in the bridge of her terrible hip-hop song.

He coughs once, pointedly.

Jehan doesn’t look up from where he’s wiping down his counter, pausing every now and then to arrange the flowers in the vase set in a corner, so Grantaire coughs again.

This time, Jehan turns to look over his shoulder, and spots Grantaire. He swings around, sets the mop down and his face cracks into a sunny smile. 

“Oh, oh!” he cries, “I thought I was imagining things! Hanging around Joly for a while tends to do that to you. You must be Éponine’s friend!”

In a flash, he’s crossed over towards him and, in a flapping of long hair scented faintly from the flowers, envelopes Grantaire in the warmest of hugs.

“This is so exciting!” he says as he pulls back, eyes shining and voice so rapturous that Grantaire starts to feel exceptionally stand-offish in comparison. He offers an incredibly awkward, self-conscious smile in apology.  

“Éponine’s told me—well, _some_ things about you, that were certainly interesting… but now I must know more! How did the two of you meet? Where do you stay? How do you feel about green tea?”

Behind them, Éponine sets down her scissors and hairspray can. There’s a squawk of dismay from poor abandoned Mrs. Hucheloup, and Éponine hurriedly dives for her purse, retrieves the knitting the old lady has been working on for weeks, and deposits it in her lap.

It’s enough to distract her for the time being, and Éponine slinks away to insinuate herself between Grantaire and Jehan. 

Grantaire’s still reeling a little from the barrage of questions and the general bizarreness that's been following him ever since he poked his head in through the door, so she generously answers on his behalf.

“Green tea?” she says, wrapping an arm around his middle and giving him a squeeze that also somehow manages to snuff the very breath out of his lungs. “Sure, as long as you mix it up with a few pints beforehand—then he's up for pretty much _anything_.”

She smiles so sweetly up at him that Grantaire can almost feel his teeth rot the more he looks at her. He smiles back, stiffly, and renews his attempts to breathe.

“He stays with me,” Éponine continues placidly, “In a charming little flat not far from here, on the floor just above a devilishly handsome young law student by the name of Marius Pontmer—”

“Ép.” Grantaire's managed to wrest himself free enough for his lungs to expand _almost_ normally, and he shushes her with a finger on her lips. He can practically see the giant question mark forming on Jehan’s face now, and he hastens to address it. 

“We do stay together, yes. As friends. We’re friends.”

“Yeah,” Éponine sighs, voice muffled against Grantaire’s finger. “Sadly enough, I'm not properly… equipped to fulfil his other needs, you see. Shame.”

Jehan laughs lightly, even as his face turns slightly pink. Grantaire can feel his own cheeks grow warm as well, but Éponine of course is completely unfazed.

“I’d do anything to make him happy—well, short of growing a dick. No… _hard_ feelings, right?” She giggles, and draws Grantaire’s arm around to circle her tiny waist. “He’s my real life knight in shining armour, see.”

She turns around and looks at him for a long moment. The smile on her lips is playful and light, but her eyes are strangely soft and sharp and far, far away all at the same time.

(eyes that had met his once, wide and glassy and unseeing from the ground she lay upon with pinpricks studding her arms like the pinpricks in the night sky, high above a lonely alley in the dead of a warm June night.)

(and they got away, they’d left her like that and got the fuck away, and fuck the alcohol that slowed his brain and turned his limbs to lead, because they’d left her to lie in a lonely alley with her eyes unseeing and pinpricks on her arm twisting and curling and swelling and ballooning till they swallowed her whole, and they’d _got the fuck away_ —)

She turns back to Jehan, and grins. “If knights in shining armour vastly preferred the blade to the chalice that is, if you catch my drift,” she winks. “And very helpfully introduced you to hot law students instead!”

And Grantaire blinks, and Éponine’s laughing, cheap silver hoop earrings bouncing with the motion, and her eyes are alive.

(eyes that were alive once, on a sunny summer afternoon in the spare room in his flat—“It’s not as small as looks right now, you’ll see when I move out those, er, bottles over there, and I do think we can make it quite cosy for you with the extra cushions from the couch… They’re a bit old and I may have thrown up over some of them once or twice, but you won’t mind too much, will you?”)

(eyes that were alive as she’d leapt into his arms and hugged him till he couldn't breathe and his shoulder had grown moist where she’d pressed her face against him.)

(eyes that are alive even now, with mischief and happiness and love and _life_.)

“Idiot.” He elbows her in the ribs, and the pinpricks shrink and recede and disappear like they never had been. 

He turns to Jehan. “Look, sorry,” he says quickly. “I’m not usually this unprof—oww, all right, Ép, _fine_ —I’m not always this unprofessional! I don’t have any formal training, but I really am desperately in need of a job at the moment, and Éponine said she didn’t know much when she first came here either but now she does her thing like a pro, and I’m a quick study, I promise, and apparently you’ve got a vac—”

“Calm down!” laughs Jehan, placing his hands on Grantaire’s shoulders and cutting him off mid-ramble. “We _always_ have a vacancy around these parts,” he assures him with a wry look at the booths on the opposite side of the room that look as though they’ve never been used.

“A quick study, though?” he continues, and Grantaire notes with some trepidation a now-familiar gleam beginning to kindle to life in his eyes. He pries Éponine off Grantaire’s side, and whips out a pair of scissors from somewhere.

“Welcome to the Salon Musain,” he says, lips parting in a Cheshire-cat grin as the sheen of metal echoes the glint in his eyes. “I trust you’ll enjoy your stay.”

-:-

If Grantaire had thought after his first meeting with Jehan that he’d received his share of bizarre experiences at Salon Musain to last him at least a lifetime, he was very sorely mistaken.

It doesn’t take him long to master the art to workable degrees under the firm, perfectionistic, and quite possibly clinically insane tutelage of the young poet. Grantaire wasn’t lying when he’d said he was a quick study: years of dabbling in a million different things from learning ballet to boxing to making sushi have made him incredibly nimble at picking up most things. And hairdressing, as it turns out, is no exception.

But even with things progressing so smoothly on the work front, Grantaire quickly realises that no matter what, every day at the Salon Musain was going to be a complete adventure. Even disregarding the fact that such a day at the Salon Musain involves Miss Éponine Thénardier—walking adventure in herself—there’s no end to the odd things that seem to crop up around Grantaire whenever he’s in within the four walls of the place.

Or outside it, too: like the time Éponine and Jehan team up to hang up the new sign above the door—Grantaire’s design, complete with a spanking new logo (an ornate letter _M_ , threaded through with flowers and knives).

Art is the one thing Grantaire has never been trained in, but Jehan catches him doodling between clients one day, and immediately assigns him the job of bringing some colour into the place. It’s a little awkward to have his own artwork staring down at him from all around the room all the time, but for someone who can count on one hand the things he can honestly say he’s proud of in his entire life, it’s pretty fucking special too. 

So he starts to settle in, and somehow, somewhere, he exhausts his capacity to be shocked at anything anymore. It’s so much easier to _expect_ to find Jehan bursting aloud into poetry at random hours of the day, with Courfeyrac ambling in occasionally to distract him with kisses and filthy innuendo, and make bets with Éponine about the maddest of things.

Not to mention the clientele walking in through the door all day, each stranger than the last.

There’s Joly, the hypochondriac medical student with the questionable taste in scarves, and Bossuet, his best friend, with whom he seems to share everything as long as it’s properly sterilised—including a girlfriend, apparently. Her name is Musichetta, and she’s breathtakingly beautiful with rich dark hair in tightly curled ringlets down to her waist. Bossuet’s completely bald, but he tags along with them anyway, arms linked as they enter and leave together.

Combeferre, one of Éponine’s regulars, is Courfeyrac’s best friend and polar opposite: polite, dependable and unfailingly patient. This last is probably why he hasn’t demanded someone other than Éponine yet; indeed, for some unfathomable reason, he doesn’t even seem to particularly mind the arrangement. 

Then there’s Feuilly, and his flatmate Bahorel. They’re both intensely passionate about football, but while Feuilly’s more into talking about it, with stats and analyses always at the tip of his tongue, Bahorel is the type for demonstrations of a more _physical_ variety. 

Grantaire learns quickly what cues from the game means he’s about to turn into a biohazard zone, and religiously avoids him at such times.

It’s all going as well as he could hope, till one day, when he isn’t expecting anything any more out of the ordinary than what is, well, _ordinary_ around these parts, everything turns on its head quite abruptly again.

It starts with Éponine tearing her phone from her ear, and pressing down on the lock button with a decidedly vicious click.

“Marius is coming in tomorrow,” she announces to the world at large, which consists currently of Grantaire, the mountain of beer bottles laid out in front of him on Jehan’s desk, and the Sex and the City rerun on the TV in the corner.

“Oh?” says Grantaire comfortably, not looking up. Jehan’s been whisked off for a three-day vacation to Majorca by Courfeyrac, and it’s just him and Éponine holding fort here by themselves.

“Marius is coming in tomorrow,” she repeats in a vindictive hiss, “And do you know who he’s bringing with him? Dear, lovely, _perfect_ Miss Cosette Valjean, of course.”

Grantaire can very nearly _see_ the fumes rising profusely out of the top of her head, and he can’t help chuckling.

“Oh come on, Ép, you can’t be serious. You do realise he must’ve been the one to ask her in the first place, since she’s most likely never even heard of this place?”

“Oh my god, R, could you _be_ more off the point?” Éponine wails, flapping her arms about quite frantically. “She agreed to come! He asked her, and she agreed! I mean, wow… who does that?”

“Um, you would?”

With a huff of heartfelt frustration, Éponine stalks up to him and cuffs him across the back of his head. There’s some sort of hair product sticking to her palm, and it squelches most disagreeably against his scalp.

“You're supposed to be _understanding_ , not mean and snarky,” she says, looking completely betrayed. With a dramatic flounce of her ponytail, she deposits an armful of equipment in his lap and stalks towards the stairs at the back of the shop “You handle Enjolras when he reaches in a bit, I’m going to go upstairs to raid Courfeyrac’s CD collection for angsty things now,” she informs him. “Maybe that’ll prove to be more sympathetic than my best _friend_.”

“Wait, Enjolras is coming in today?” Grantaire’s only a little tipsy, but he nearly stumbles off the chair as he tries to get up. This leads to all of Éponine’s things spilling out to the floor, and it takes him a good minute to gather them all up again. “Who’s Enjolras?” he mutters irritably to himself as he fishes for the last set of rollers.

When he straightens up eventually, he’s defying all the laws of physics trying to balance at least twenty different kinds of hairspray and scissors and combs and things in his arms, has some questionable sticky material stick clinging to his hair, and there’s Good Charlotte shaking the ceiling already from the floor upstairs.

Of course, because this is Grantaire’s life, that’s when the most beautiful guy he’s laid eyes on his entire fucking life walks into the fucking shop, right through the fucking doorway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3 as always to [chasing-givenchy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/chasing_givenchy/pseuds/chasing_givenchy) for the beta.
> 
> i'm sorry about the lack of enjolras so far! i promise to make up nicely for it in the next chapter, though :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry this took so long! i hope you guys enjoy this chapter x

“Is Jehan in?”

Grantaire _thinks_ he hears something to that effect, floating in on the wind from somewhere far, far away. But he can’t be sure. He is a little bit occupied otherwise, you see.

Like in trying his hardest to wrap his head around the fact that the stranger at the doorway is real. And that he’s really just standing there, live in the mindnumblingly attractive flesh, and not just a figment of his most outlandish fancies. As far from the realm of mathematical probability that might seem, and he’s experienced just about every shade of outlandish there is to experience. 

Along with suppressing the urge to _scream_ at the top three buttons of his shirt, as they lie most offensively undone.

“Excuse me?” the voice on the wind starts up again, like a distant, niggling hum that Grantaire is really, really starting to wish would go away. “I believe I just asked you a question.”

Because it’s trying—and failing, but still trying—to distract him from the more important questions here. Such as how that exposed triangle of his chest, layered with a faint sheen of sweat, might taste when he licks it all over. And how the rest of him would look when he rips off the buttons remaining, one by one. 

(With his teeth.)

The faraway voice makes a frustrated little huff that he doesn’t notice till suddenly—holy shit—it starts closing in. Golden curls, maddeningly tight shirt and all. And Grantaire isn’t ready for this, not even close, but somehow all he can compute is how toned those thighs look as they flex with the motions, clad in trousers that fit him snug as sin.

Before he knows it, he is impossibly close. Quick as lightning, Grantaire places his elbow casually on something he spies jutting out in his peripheral vision.

It turns out to be the top of one of the empty bottles he’d been attempting (unsuccessfully) to construct a fort with on Jehan's desk earlier.

_Act cool_ , he thinks, as his palms start to sweat enough to water an average sized village. _Just act—_

His arm slips, and the bottle topples.

Grantaire wants to drown himself in his bottle. Bodily. But the moment passes, and nothing shifts in the pale marble face to show he’s even noticed, so he silently counts his blessings. 

That is, till he finds himself on the receiving end of a look of mild distaste and, without a word more emerging from those perfectly shaped lips, he is coolly sidestepped. 

In hindsight, whipping around to indignantly splutter, “Now hang on just a minute—!” with a whole armful of potentially life-threatening objects probably wasn’t a very bright idea.

He doesn’t even notice anything particularly out of order, till he manages to clench his fists—which he really oughtn’t to be able to do, considering. The resounding clatter of metal and plastic and possibly some glass hitting the floor follows about half a second later.

The guy turns to him, and gives him a Look. Slow and deliberate and pointedly travelling from the spilt objects on the floor, to the bottle he’s still managed to clutch onto somehow, to his face.

“Oh look,” he drawls, voice impossibly dry. “It speaks.”

Grantaire wishes he could say it makes him feel small. With a healthy dose of righteous indignation for it, criminally sexy perpetrator or no. Instead, he only feels a mild degree of annoyance that said perpetrator should venture to ruin the perfection of said sexiness with _words._

Along with an exponentially heightened urge to just _climb_ the guy, but that was probably just par for the course.

“You shouldn’t say things like that,” he says, voice low and husky as he smooths back his hair with his free hand, all mysterious and _sexyawesomecool_ and certainly, most certainly not utterly lame. Taking a quick, reckless swig from his bottle, he swaggers up to the other man.

It’s a swagger. Not a clumsy lop-sided waddle from a little alcohol and a lot of nerves, why would you ever suggest such a thing?

He reaches Jehan’s desk, where long fingers are rifling through the papers laid out on it, and leans right into his personal space. “You really shouldn’t.”

He is rewarded with a look uncannily like that one emoji Éponine always uses to reply to his drunken, rambling texts. Her default narrow-eyed, frowny-faced, _I’m-so-done-with-you-R_ disapproving look.

It’s partly because this stupidly gorgeous human being just won’t look at him with anything but disdain in those stupidly, stupidly blue eyes, let alone tell him what he’s here for. And partly because this is starting to feel increasingly like his own personal porno, tailor-made just for him. Either way, Grantaire quickly realises that such expressions when attached to beautiful blond gods tend to lead to word vomit in reply. 

Of the quite spectacularly painful, curl-up-and-die variety.

“You have the right to—” pin me up against a wall, please and thank you “—remain silent,” he rasps, with some difficulty. “Anything you say or do can—”

The man straightens up. His jaws clench and unclench. (Just how wide can they go?) “Put your bottle down when you speak to me,” he orders. “And actually try to make the faintest bit of sense next time?”

Grantaire keeps his eyes fixed on him as he takes another huge gulp, wipes his chin and deliberately sets the bottle down right next to his hand.

Not touching it, though. This close, he doesn’t think he could ever dare.

“Well now, Apollo,” he says stubbornly, folding his arms. The choice of nickname takes even himself by surprise, because it certainly wasn’t a conscious decision. “You don’t give me a name and uhm, number, and you just come straight here to look through Jehan’s things? You don’t need to be Officer Javert to find _that_ suspicious.”

_Give me one good reason not to handcuff you right this minute_ , his brain tacks on.

“My name is Enjolras,” comes the cool reply. “And I've been a friend of Jehan’s since we were about six. Anything else?”

“A number?” Grantaire snatches up a piece of paper from Jehan’s desk and blinks earnest, wide eyes, the picture of innocence.

Enjolras gives him a funny look. “I really don’t see how that’s necessary.”

Grantaire shrugs. “It was worth a try,” he sighs. “In any case,” he continues, clueless about where he’s going with this, but ploughing on all the same. “You’d be surprised at the things people can accomplish when they’re about six. Look at Macaulay Culkin in that film. Not the one you’re thinking, the other one. With the cliff, and foetus Frodo Baggins. And _they_ were related.”

He’s implying to the most beautiful boy he’s seen in all his life that he suspects he might be a psychopath. This is actually, actually just happening. 

Enjolras looks like he can't believe this is real life either. “Couldn’t I extend the same courtesy to you, then?” he asks, one slim golden eyebrow raised. “I, for one, don't have the slightest clue who _you_ are.”

“I’m Grantaire,” he says in a voice fully intended to sound deep and sultry, but it probably ends up more like a feeble sort of croak. “I work here.”

Enjolras gives him a brief once-over, by the end of which Grantaire has discovered a newfound sympathy for the sentiment, ‘Can I get pregnant from this?’ “Impossible,” concludes Enjolras at last. 

“Yeah,” agrees Grantaire absently. Then he jerks to his senses. “Wait, what’s that supposed to mean?” he demands.

“Only that this is Jehan’s salon we’re standing in, and it’s you speaking the words? I know how Jehan feels about his work, and employing the likes of you is about as likely as him starting a vendetta against floral prints any time soon.”

“Did you just make an attempt at humour there?” asks Grantaire, amazed. 

Enjolras sniffs, lips drawn into an impossibly thin line. “My point being,” he presses in his Voice Of Reason. “I find it rather hard to believe you work here, when you seem so perfectly incapable of doing anything worthwhile with yourself.”

“You don't know the first thing about me, Apollo,” says Grantaire airily, as if his stomach hasn’t just plummeted to somewhere in the region of his ankles.

Enjolras gives himself an exasperated little shake, and bends over the table again. “At any rate,” he answers, “I know it’s pointless to waste my time seeking information from you.”

“What sort of information?” Grantaire frowns, wishing he hadn’t drunk that last swig from his bottle. His brain is still pretty cloudy, and extended periods of proximity to ridiculously attractive boys don’t help in the slightest.

“That piece of poetry Jehan was supposed to write for the new issue,” Enjolras grumbles softly as he ducks his head to hunt inside the drawers. Grantaire gets the distinct impression he’s so absorbed in his task that he’s forgotten to ignore him.

“Issue of what?” he ventures, voice very carefully neutral.

“Magazine,” Enjolras grunts, sweeping a hand around inside the drawer. “Editorial’s all done, besides Jehan’s intro piece.”

Grantaire’s heart rate escalates so fast, it cannot possibly be healthy. He can ask just about anything now, and Enjolras may actually answer. Possibility after possibility starts to chase each other around in his head, each more attractive than the last.

_How do you take your coffee? Are you a morning person? Can you take your clothes off?_

Of course, because this is _still_ Grantaire’s life, this is where the four-foot-high stuff of nightmares also known as Gavroche hurtles into the shop, with his little band of merry midgets in tow.

-:-

Grantaire should probably get his eyes checked. Soon. Because the severe case of twitching afflicting them every time he looks at the newcomers cannot be anything short of worrying.

Gavroche stops wheezing eventually and dusts off his ridiculous little jacket with the air of one who has weathered more battles than the years to his name. (Not that that’s a particularly impressive achievement, in his case.) Then he makes some sort of signal to his troops, and as one, three pairs of grubby hands reach out for the shelf where Éponine had left a bar of chocolate she’d been nibbling on earlier.

Grantaire smoothly draws it out, and pockets it. The twitch has spread by now to the vein in his temple. “What’s up, Gav?” he asks, with a conscious effort to remain calm.

“Oh, just old Javert snooping around again outside,” he shrugs nonchalantly, beady eyes already locked in on the desk behind Grantaire, where Enjolras has started shuffling about the contents of the drawers again.

“Don’t even think about it,” warns Grantaire, grabbing him by the back of his collar and steering him a few feet off. “Jehan may be out of town, but don’t you think for a second that gives you the f—”

“Jehan’s out?” comes the horrified exclamation from behind him. “Out of town?”

“Yeah, well, I mean—” Grantaire wheels around so fast he’ll probably feel the whiplash later.

“When did he leave?” cuts in Enjolras sharply.

“Day before yesterday, but—”

“And when’s he returning?”

“Tomorrow, though you see—”

“Damn it,” Enjolras mutters.

“Er, yeah,” Grantaire says, and the word vomit starts up again. “But, but, you know. What of it? So Jehan’s out of town. It’s no biggie, right? Because, um, I’m still here. I’m _always_ here. All the time. And I don’t go out of town. Ever. So, you know you could always—”

Enjolras breezes past him, muttering about time and schedules and Very Important Things, and disappears through the door.

“He’s a morning person,” Grantaire sighs mournfully at the still-swinging wind chimes. “He’s definitely a morning person.”

-:-

Ten minutes after Gavroche has been summarily deposited on the street outside, Grantaire finishes closing up the shop. It’s at least two hours too early, but after everything that’s just gone down, he feels like he deserves to be cut that much slack.

Clearly, early closing hours were _invented_ for predicaments such as this.

When he stumbles up to the top of the stairs somehow, Jehan and Courfeyrac’s flat is as silent as the grave.

“Ép, if you’ve killed yourself I hope you’ve used pills,” he calls out tiredly as he crosses the threshold. “You know how Jehan gets about stains on the carpet.”

He grabs two beers from the fridge and makes a beeline for the spot he knows he’ll find her.

Across the living room, the ceiling-to-floor windows stand ajar. Grantaire knocks it open with his ankle, and bends to press one of the bottles into Éponine’s hand.

The stars are out, and she turns to look up at him from where she’s stretched out on the gently sloping roof. He folds his knees, and mirrors her.

“I’m getting to see the love of my life with the girl he’s been crushing on forever fawning all over him tomorrow,” she says, toying with the label on her bottle. “What’s your excuse?”

Grantaire closes his eyes and lets his bones turn to jelly. “Not bad,” he says. “I might have accused mine of being a serial killer on my first time meeting him?”

Éponine sits up on her elbows and stares at him. Then she lets out a shout of laughter that makes a bird fly out of the tree nearby. “You met Enjolras just now, didn’t you?” she manages to ask between explosive little snorts.

Grantaire groans and covers his face in his hands, as the events from earlier begin to replay in his head in gory detail. 

“Oh my god,” says Éponine, curling up on her side in paroxysms of mirth. “Oh my god. You win, by the way.”

She takes a few minutes and a few deep, calming breaths to compose herself. When she’s capable again of keeping a straight face on for a stretch of at least ten seconds, she reaches over and gently tickles Grantaire’s stomach. It’s always had a soothing effect on him, and he sighs after a while and leans into it like a pleased cat. 

“Enjolras is a dick,” she informs him matter-of-factly, ruthlessly continuing the attentions so that he is distracted to some degree. “He loves his friends deep down and is super passionate about his little politics section of their uni magazine and everything, but he’s really just a bit of dick.”

“I know,” Grantaire returns darkly, voice muffled behind the hand his face is still buried in. “Why is that so fucking hot?”

“Because you’re a masochist? Face it R, the only thing that can get Enjolras going is probably, like, Robespierre action figures. With impassioned political debates for dirty talk.”

“Oh, shit,” Grantaire groans, toes curling. “That’s fucking hot.”

“Not quite the reaction I was aiming for,” sighs Éponine. “Screw it then, bring on the alcohol.”

-:-

The ten-minute walk from Salon Musain to the building where Grantaire and Éponine share a flat together takes them at least forty minutes. It’s a residential area, mostly, so the streets are quite desolate, and they’re only three-fourths of the way there at the end of it.

“And then, then I told him,” Grantaire slurs, stumbling along the pavement, “You were friends with Jehan when you were six, but what if you were secretly, like, Macaulay Culkin in that film? You know, the creepy one. Where he pushes people off things.”

“The Good Son,” answers Éponine reverently.

Grantaire tries to give her a Look, but only ends up looking mildly constipated. “You would know,” he says with an ineffectual attempt at an eye-roll.

“Oh, oh, listen to mine, though,” says Éponine, tugging at his arm. “Marius asked Cosette to come along with him to a hair salon tomorrow! Isn’t that the most adorable thing you ever heard of? And you know what else? She agreed!” She doubles over, in peals of laughter.

She tightens her grip on his arm suddenly, and stops.

“Do you ever just want to lie down in front of traffic?” she asks, deadly serious.

“That is my default state of being for a good percentage of my life, yes.”

“Come on,” Éponine tugs him over. It seems like a good idea at the time.

“This is fun,” Grantaire says fifteen seconds later, back on the tarmac, eyes on the stars. “Very… _Notebook_ , wouldn’t you say?”

“As long as you’re not expecting me to eat ice cream off your face,” Éponine snorts.

“No, thanks. I don’t think I’m going to ever want to eat anything off anyone’s face ever again, unless they’re Enjolras. I’d eat ice cream off _his_ face. His dick, too. Oh shit, he’s ruined me forever, hasn’t he?”

There’s a faint rumble beneath them. They stay quiet for a while, and it starts to grow till they can hear it, too. 

“I think there’s a car coming,” says Éponine at last.

“Yeah,” Grantaire agrees. “They tend to do that. Come down roads, I mean.” He bites his lip. “I don't think I want to die.”

Éponine hums. “I know, right? The sale at Miss Selfridge’s starts next week. And you know what that means!”

“Ten times more customers, but fifty times more security?”

“Oh pfft! Don’t you underestimate me, young sir!” she waggles a finger patronisingly at him.

“No, no,” says Grantaire, suddenly solemn. “If someone like Enjolras can intersect with this plane of existence, anything’s possible. Really. Which means we should probably get—HOLY SHIT IT’S JAVERT.”

“Wait, what?” Éponine asks confusedly as he bolts upright.

“He’s been suspecting me forever about that thing with Gabrielle and Dominique and whatserface, I know he has! And I’d know that car anywhere, fuck fuck _fuck_.”

He grabs her hand urgently. Postponing a gruesome and violent exit from a world with sales at Miss Selfridge’s and beautiful marble gods, or Javert? The choice seems fairly obvious.

They leap to their feet, and race to the pavement. Javert is Javert, and he’s the one with the car, but they have the black night and shadows stretching over a neighbourhood they know like the back of their hand to their advantage.

They cut across corners, laughing like mad, and suddenly nothing in the world seems impossible anymore.


End file.
